A bill that would have made California the first state to require soft drinks to carry warning labels is pretty much dead. The bill wanted energy drinks, fruit drinks and certain sodas to include a label read, "State Of California Safety Warning:...

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You may wish to check out the July 2, 2014 special to the Sacramento Bee article by Liz Applegate, "Viewpoints: Soda labeling bill is based on misleading statements." The problem for the average low-income stay-at-home mom reading this piece is that the average consumer (who's not paid by anyone from the beverage industries or from the universities or by the health-related industries) sees that the piece in the Viewpoints section of the Sacramento Bee is written by a paid adviser to the American Beverage Association who also happens to be director of sports nutrition at the University of California, Davis. The American Beverage Association represents the non-alcoholic, refreshment beverage industry.

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Notice how few articles tell readers from all walks of life to drink clean, filtered water and eat a balanced amount of fiber in your food instead of wolfing down sweetened soda or juices. Ah, but the beverage associations of any type want to sell you more refreshments.

Follow the money. If something safe to eat is free or close to being free, usually you won't find such thirst quenchers represented at conventions targeting nutrition experts. Sugary sodas are subsidized just like fatty, salt chips. They're cheaper than many types of fresh produce and are eaten for breakfast or snacks by many children, especially kids from low-income families. Often soda and chips may cost less than a head of broccoli. Or a burger and soda from a fast-food eatery may be cheaper and fill up a kid quicker than buying one item, such as a vegetable or fruit from a supermarket. Some of the healthiest foods aren't subsidized by the government or by the huge food manufacturers.

Notice how so many of the cheaper foods such as processed cereals with sugar or syrups are filling up people, including kids quicker than a bowl of organic apples, for example? Sodas are cheaper than many drinks with no added sweeteners. Worse yet, some people are buying powdered caffeine online and adding it to sodas instead of getting energy from healthy foods.

The article in the Sacramento Bee refers to what's in soda pop as liquid sugar. Is it really liquid sugar or fructose, here in most of the sodas sold locally? But in the USA, sugar is expensive. So high fructose corn syrup is used in most soda pop, compared to where sugar is cheaper, such as in Mexico. See, "High Fructose Corn Syrup Fuelling Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic." Fructose can make you hungrier, so you eat more, whereas sugar can make you feel full sooner.

Remember that wealthy manufacturers who make soda can afford to hire experts in the field of nutrition to make sure there are plenty of scientific articles to quote that don't prove anything bad about liquid sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or any other kind of sugar or sweetener used by any given part of the huge beverage industry because manufacturers don't want to lose their income, and what they want is to make sure customers feel it's fine to drink their products.

And if a consumer who has no training in nutrition wants to know, studies often will be labeled as flawed, but the consumer will find it difficult to have someone explain to the average newspaper reader why one professional thinks a study done by another professional is flawed. Everyone has a right to his or her opinion, especially when politics also is on the table, and voters want to know what can be understood.

One of the big issues is how fructose compared to table sugar affects your body

You might find noteworthy the book, Your Body Is Your Best Doctor by Melvin Page D.D.S., H. Leon Abrams Jr., page 196. Dr. Page found that the ideal ratio of calcium to phosphorus in your body for ideal health should be around 2 1/2/:1. When you eat candy, drink sugary soda, or consume "liquid sugar" or sugar as evaporated granules or juice, that ratio of calcium to phosphorus gets unbalanced, which can lead to tooth neck disease, or as dentists remind their patients, tooth decay, dental caries, or cavities, different words for the same problem.

Prehistoric peoples didn't drink liquid sugars. When they consumed fructose, it was in a piece of fruit mixed in a specific ratio with sucrose (sugar). The whole fruit contained fiber because prehistoric people didn't have juicers to take out the sugary water and leave the pulp behind. What gave prehistoric peoples tooth decay was eating acorns. See, "Paleo diet rotted the teeth of cave people eating acorn patties."

What happens when sugar in any form is consumed is that your bloodstream's supposedly balanced ratio of calcium to phosphorus can become unbalanced, for example, by eating some sugary candy or drinking soda

Way back in 1937, Dr. Westin Price, DDS wrote a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. The book is in print currently, but not too many professionals treating tooth decay or various degenerative problems possibly related to diet have read it.

Dr. Westin Price, DDS inspired Dr. Page, as Dr. Price believed that an unbalanced ratio of calcium to phosphorous in your body led to a variety of degenerative diseases including some of the chronic diseases and also tooth decay, tooth infection, and inflammation. Basically, Dr. Page found that the ideal ratio of calcium to phosphorus in your body for ideal health should be around 2 1/2/:1.

This ratio was then used by Dr. Page to determine the correct nutritional diet and/or supplements dosages in order to balance the chemistry of your body. That's how nutrition and endocrinology becomes linked, by using nutrition to help balance the chemistry of your body.

Foods that lessen the risk of tooth decay

Foods that lessen the risk of tooth decay are foods that help balance the calcium to phosphorous ratio in your blood stream. When it comes to your balanced calcium-phosphorous ratio, it's about 8.75 mg of calcium per 100 cc of blood to 3.5 mg of phosphorous per 100 cc of blood, with normal sugar levels that is more likely to create immunity to tooth decay in most people, according to the book, Your Body Is Your Best Doctor by Melvin Page D.D.S., H. Leon Abrams Jr., page 196.

Often foods that help protect against cancer also work on the thyroid in various ways. In light of this research on chemopreventive foods at UC Davis and other universities, the American Cancer Society recommends consuming broccoli as part of a balanced diet that includes foods from a variety of plant sources.

Some urban neighborhoods of Sacramento County such as Arden Arcade or Citrus Heights have dentists located every few blocks. But dental self sufficiency is a nutrition-based issue that begins in your home.

You don't want calcium from your teeth stuffing up your arteries or calcifying your glands. Worse yet, when minerals are pulled from your teeth, you get tooth decay and gum disease. The root cause of tooth decay and gum disease are the high blood sugar spikes.

Those in turn lead to the loss of calcium from your teeth, loss of enamel, and gum infections/gum disease. You can check out the studies on this. See the book, Your Body is Your Best Doctor, by M. Page and L. Abrams. New Canaan: Keats Publishing, Inc. 1972:188. Dr. Melvin Page, D.D.S. developed a system of body measurements to determine one's inherited glandular pattern.

Eating a quarter pound of candy (chocolates made with sugar) can make your phosphorous levels shoot up and out of balance with calcium

Simply eating a quarter pound of candy (chocolates made with sugar) may make your phosphorous levels shoot up after less than two hours and out of balance with your calcium levels, possibly putting you in harm's way of tooth decay. You see, tooth decay probably isn't going to happen when your diet keeps your phosphorous to calcium ratio in balance. But first you have to be aware of what that ratio is.

It has been found that a constant ratio of calcium and phosphorous (10-4) in your blood plasma is the optimum requirement for adults. There's a higher and varying level of phosphorous requirement for growing children. And there's a lower (but still proportional levels) of calcium to phosphorous being required when you're in your older years. Whether you get tooth decay or not depends upon a certain proportion of calcium and phosphorous in your blood.

Scientists still don't know what the ratio might be for manufacturing bone, but as far as tooth decay prevention, if you have a certain ratio of calcium to phosphorous in your blood, you may become immune to tooth decay, probably, according to Dr. Page's book, which was inspired by the books written by Weston A. Price, DDS, in the 1930s.

Also decalcification of your teeth happens when there's a mineral imbalance in your saliva. And repeated tests have long proven that a mineral imbalance in your saliva is a reflection of your calcium-to-phosphorous ratio. When the calcium-phosphorous ratio is imbalanced in your blood, your salivary secretions are no longer acid, and erosion of your teeth stops happening.

The goal is to correct body chemistry through nutrition. For further information, see the book Your Body is Your Best Doctor, by Melvin E. Page, DDS and H. Leon Abrams, Jr. (Pages 194-200 are especially important as far as explaining how nutrition helps to prevent tooth decay.) Dr. Page made these discoveries more than 40 years ago.

Nutrition is linked to endocrinology

Why hasn't your dentist handed you a diet sheet about nutrition and endocrinology today? Could it be because of lack of training as a holistic dentist schooled in nutritional endocrinology? Or if no one has cavities anymore, would the only business that might arrive are people with teeth in which the nerve has died, those with gum disease, and cosmetic work?

Concepts such as inflammation in a tooth joint, known as pyorrhea is related to inflammation in a joint known as arthritis. It is about these parallels that holistic dentistry researches. Yet with the type of diet most people eat by habit, introduced in early childhood (such as sugary cereals) cavities and plaque may grow from the inside out.

Some holistic dentists follow the teachings of Dr. Melvin E. Page, who is co-author of the book, Your Body is Your Best Doctor. If your holistic dentist is using the teachings found by numerous holistic dentists in the field of nutritional endocrinology, then your holistic dentist will probably tell you that it's the ratio of calcium to phosphorous in your body that probably determines whether or not you'll get tooth decay.

Also body measurement was used. For example the length and circumference of your lower leg and lower arm. The lower limbs were measured to determine inherited glandular patterns in your body. This happened many years before the concept of tailoring your diet to your genes became popular. In those days the balancing focused on your body chemistry and endocrinology.

The idea was that slight glandular imbalances may lead to degenerative diseases. And nutrition can help to bring back balance in the chemistry in your body. For example, too much calcium in your blood may lead to too much tartar or plaque accumulating on your teeth.

Too much acid in your mouth, and you have tooth decay. Too much alkaline in your mouth, and you have gum disease. To rebalance your body chemistry in various parts of your body from your calcified pineal gland to your constant tooth decay required changing your diet. Sometimes the culprit was drinking too much milk. Or perhaps your teeth have been ruined by too much sugar.

Did you ever take your family to a local holistic dentist who is trained in nutritional endocrinology? If so, you'll probably get a diet to follow after your calcium-to-phosphorus ratio has been measured with a blood test. Check out the various directories online of holistic dentists. Pick your home town and state and look up lists of holistic dentists in your area of the nation. But generally, dentists don't give people blood tests to see whether they have an imbalance in their body chemistry as far as the calcium to phosphorous ratio, which is important in whether your teeth are relatively immune to tooth decay or not.

Plaque buildup comes from too much calcium floating around in your bloodstream instead of going into your bones and teeth

Did you know that plaque buildup on your teeth comes from too much calcium floating around in your bloodstream? And tooth decay may be caused by another chemical imbalance in the calcium to phosphorus ratio in your bloodstream. On the other hand, Sacramento and Davis researchers study milk proteins for health benefits.

Lactoferrin is being used as an antimicrobial. Casein-glycomacropeptide (CGMP), the kappa-casein peptide released during cheesemaking, offers functionality for protecting teeth from cavities.

Casein phosphoproteins have the ability to remineralize teeth

Casein phosphoproteins have been discovered to have similar dental protective properties as CGMP but with the added ability to remineralize teeth. Milk basic proteins, a crude mixture of proteins from whey, have been shown in studies in Japan to protect adults from bone loss. And, finally, whey proteins have become the darlings of the body building set for their muscle building properties. But some people can't handle the milk sugars.

Did you know that dental plaque buildup comes from too high a level of calcium in your blood instead of in your bones? The too-high level of calcium in your blood often comes from cooked, high-heated animal proteins that are not fully digested, sometimes because you lack enough digestive enzymes to fully digest the cooked animal proteins. And the older you get, the less digestive enzymes are available to fully digest cooked animal proteins.

When your body chemistry is not in the proper ratio of calcium to phosphorus, plaque quickly builds up on your teeth. What follows is that the calcium deposits on your teeth keep growing because the particular form of calcium in your diet is not able to be absorbed by your body.

Basically, doctor Page found that a disturbance in the ratio of calcium to phosphorus is the cause of tooth decay, according to the book, Your Body is Your Best Doctor. It is also mentioned in chapter 3, page 28 of the book, Cure Tooth Decay, by Ramiel Nagel.

According to Dr. Page, a ratio of 8.75 mg of calcium per 100cc of blood, and 3.5mg of phosphorus per 100cc of blood, with normal blood sugar levels, creates "immunity to tooth decay," according to page 196 of the book, Your Body is Your Best Doctor,1972.

What happens when calcium is not able to be absorbed, oozes out as plaque along the gum line of your teeth and attracts bacteria?

As more and more calcium in your body is not able to be absorbed, the calcium pouring into your bloodstream also keeps building up. This means that plaque by itself is not the cause of your gum disease. It's the excess calcium, unable to be absorbed, building up in your blood and oozing out onto your teeth at the gum line that's causing the problem.

To fix the problem, you can use diet changes to normalize your body's internal chemistry. Diet changes mean cutting out excess sugar, and whole grains not fermented or prepared in such a way that the phytic acids in the grain isn't pulling out the minerals in your body such as magnesium and calcium.

You don't want to use diet to pull out the minerals in your bones because then those minerals pour into your bloodstream. You don't want all that excess calcium in your bloodstream and arteries or organs. You want calcium and other minerals in your bones and teeth and not along the gum line as plaque.

Some dentists believe that it only takes a 25% imbalance of your body's chemistry for tooth decay to begin. The biochemical cause of tooth decay is related to nutrition. In fact the biochemistry shows that tooth decay may be caused by a "disturbance in the ratio of calcium to phosphorus" in your bloodstream.

There's a difference between articles touting dairy products online and articles online warning of the dangers of homogenized and heated dairy products. So where can you go for factual information online? You might start with looking for what really causes tooth decay that's related to nutrition.

You might start with looking at what foods cause imbalances in your blood. Basically, a type of imbalance that may lead to tooth decay and gum disease might begin when you have lots of blood sugar/blood glucose level spikes. When you eat simple carbohydrates that cause these blood sugar spikes, not only are you on the road to insulin resistance and pre-diabetes possibilities, but what happens is that minerals are pulled out of your bones and deposited in your blood, arteries, and organs.

You want calcium in your bones, not in your arteries or blood. Check your blood calcium levels. Is your LDL cholesterol high and your HDL low? You can keep those blood sugar spikes in check by not eating foods that hit your body with sugary highs.

The healthy blood sugar level is 85 mg per 100cc of blood. So basically, you don't want your levels of calcium or phosphorus to 'deviate' from healthy levels. According to Dr. Page's book, if you are not in the proportion of 2.5 parts calcium to one part phosphorus, those minerals come right out of your teeth and bones and end up in your blood, organs, and arteries.

He measured thousands of patients and correlated various glandular patterns with different degenerative diseases. The deviations from an ideal glandular pattern were not gross abnormalities that you would find in endocrinology text books, but slight deviations that nevertheless make significant effects on one's health.

Doctors looked at diseases associated with various glandular patterns

You also could check out the book, Degeneration Regeneration. Doctors looked at diseases associated with various glandular patterns. Interestingly, the book also deals with personality traits that may be associated with the different patterns. Check out the doctor's (dentist's) diet for health. After 40 years, this diet has stood steady.

Tooth decay is a nutrition-based issue. So is gum disease, regardless of your genetics. To bring those minerals back into your teeth before they decay too far and before gum disease loosens your teeth, it's your diet that helps to bring back the minerals. Look at your hormones.

You need to use nutrition to balance your thyroid, pituitary, and other glands. Work with foods that make your glands healthier and your blood less a high tide of sugar spikes.

Eat foods that help you get those fat-soluble vitamins back into your body in normal amounts. Make sure you're consuming enough of vitamins A,D3,E and K-2 (mk-7). You might also check out Blue Ice (tm) fermented cod liver oil--full spectrum vitamin D, and X-Factor Gold (tm) high vitamin butter oil- D3.

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Anne Hart, author of 91 paperback books, nutrition anthropology journalist, began writing full time as an independent journalist, novelist, and nonfiction book author starting on June 17, 1959. She holds a graduate degree specializing in professional writing (M.A. in English/writing). Her emphasis is on nutrition and health journalism, science writing, and culture in the media. Hart has written more than 5,000 Examiner.com articles since 2009.